I know a guy who used to work for an FBO at Islip, LI, NY, which would regularly get charter contracts from the airlines to “babysit” their slots at LGA (they have a “use it or lose it” clause, which also helps explain the large number of regional jets there). Anyway, he’d frequently get paid to bring a 172 into LaGuardia, empty, and return, just to keep the slot open.
Bizjets are once again allowed into DCA, AIUI, but the restrictions on VFR access into the DC security zone look permanent.
We ought to make it clearer that there are different categories of airspace with different permissions and equipment required. The biggest airports are in Class B airspace (CL-A is above 18,000 feet), and you need two-way radio, a “Mode C” (altitude-reporting) transponder, and explicit permission from ATC to enter it. They can and often do tell you to stay out before you even get a chance to ask. The second-level, less-busy airports are Cl-C, with no Mode C requirement, and you have implicit permission to enter it as soon as they respond with your tail number. The smallest towered airports, which usually lack airline service but can still get hectic, are CL-D, and you can enter it as soon as you establish communication with the tower (which can be by phone call or other means, not the radio, in which case you’ll get landing clearance via light gun signals). In all those examples, you do need explicit clearance from the tower to actually land, though. Untowered fields, which are most of them, are in CL-E or CL-G airspace and you have only the obligation to report your position and intentions to other pilots, if you have a working radio, and don’t need anybody’s clearance to land or to tell you which runway to use. (Airspace called CL-F in most of the world is “Special Use Airspace” in the US for whatever reason).
My family used to have (Lost it in a flood in 1972)a 16mm movie of my father, who was a navy test pilot in WWII, taking off and landing in a J3 Cub from a converted LST with a very short flight deck grafted on. The LST was doing about 15 knots into a 20 knot headwind, the Cub could take off at 30 knots, so a bunch of swabbies hung on to the struts while Dad ran the engine up, and when they let go the Cub took off straight up like a helicopter. Landed more or less the same way.
As the OP has been answered I hope no one will mind if I continue the partial hijack about landing on an aircraft carrier.
A pilot friend of mine sent me this link once. Alaskan bush pilots doing extremely short take offs and landings. Less than 20 feet for either.
It seems that a sufficiently-skilled pilot with the right aircraft could not only land on a carrier deck, he could do it in the width of the runway! (Granted, aircraft carriers do have more motion to account for but this impressed me.)
Speaking of carrier landings, here is some neat footage of a C-130 taking off and landing on the USS Forrestal. They wanted to see if it was possible in cause they needed to crank up their replenishment-at-sea routine (normally they would send supply ships out to the carrier, or fly in cargo and personnel on a C-2 Greyhound, which is much smaller, but they were concerned that in event of open war, they’d need a way to move more supplies to the ships faster.
I understand that once they knew for sure that they could do it, they checked that checkbox and said “Now let’s never do it again.”
I didn’t mean to bust you, I just assumed you forgot what you were flying that day. The thread got me interested in seeing a small plane surrounded by big jets and google popped up your story, then I saw you had replied in this thread. I figured the story was worthy of a link.
